Wikipedia:Peer review/Islamic Golden Age/archive1

Islamic Golden Age[edit]

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for October 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because the article contains many scientific claims which need to be ascertained by a neutral, 3O party, preferably someone familiar with the history of science worldwide.

Thanks, Cesar Tort 21:25, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This article covers a highly complex set of events and is quite interesting. I don't know enough to address the specific points about content that are under discussion on the article's talk page. Even so, here are some suggestions for improvement.

The lead is much too short. The lead should adequately summarize the main text. A good rule of thumb is to try to include at least a brief mention of the central ideas in each of the main text sections. Please see WP:LEAD.

The sea of blue wikilinks is fairly amazing. Common words like "artists", "engineers", "scholars", "poets", and so on should not be linked. The number of words that should be unlinked in this article may run into the hundreds. Please see WP:OVERLINK.

The article has many sources, but some sections remained unsourced. For example, the "Architecture" and "Arts" sections are unsourced, and the first half of the "Philosophy" section cites no sources. A good rule of thumb is to consider giving at least one source for each individual paragraph. Direct quotes need a source, and the reference tags for these should be placed immediately after the punctuation at the end of the quote.

Generally, the prose flows nicely. However, some of the sentences are quite long because they include so many examples. For example, the first paragraph of the "Astronomy" section consists of two sentences, the second of which contains about 200 words. The sentence is clear despite its length, but I think it would be more effective if it listed only the main things and not every possible thing. Shortening the list could also be accomplished by tightening the prose in places such as "the development of universal astrolabes, the invention of numerous other astronomical instruments", which could be compressed to "the development of universal astrolabes and other instruments". It could also be accomplished by leaving out parts of the list such as "the first elaborate experiments related to astronomical phenomena", which is a vague claim at best and one that might be difficult to verify.

To prevent digits and the nouns they modify from being separated by line-wrap on computer screens, it's customary in Wikipedia to add a no-break code between the two. Examples from the text are "10th century" and "700 mosques". I see lots of other examples. Please see WP:NBSP.

This is nothing like a complete review, but I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If you find them so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 03:16, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]